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even at his young age, shin is well aware of all ails that plague the city. even before hiyori, he knew of the backstreets, and the outskirts, of syndicates squashing entire towns for the sake of vengeance, or power, or some esoteric will of the city. he knows about the singularities, as far as their existence goes, but he tries not to berate himself for not being aware of the details. he is not hiyori, not a feather (yet?), just a regular sixteen year old with his whole life ahead of him.
despite his awareness, all of those things he has heard about seem so distant and otherworldly. nest k might be boring, but at least it is safe from violence and misery. or at least, that's what he thought.
at first, shin wrote hiyori's... oddities off as simple cultural differences between nests - however close district 20 is to district 11, they are still widely different. different enough to make hiyori stand out among everyone at their school. maybe that's why they got along so well - outcasts tend to stick together, as it turns out. yet still, something tells him that not everyone in district 20's nest is like this.
the walls of his room are adorned with monitors, and framed butterfly carcasses, and odd, messy notes crudely stuck onto dark wallpaper. it's weird to be there without the man himself, without his green hair hovering in his line of vision and his shrill voice blabbering on and on about how wonderful k corp's technologies are, and the new type of prosthetics he heard about, and, and, and...
he is as careful as he possibly can be when he shuffles the papers around and opens the drawers, hoping that the thing he was sent out to find is not hiding too far away. and yet, there's nothing even closely resembling what he was sent to fetch. frustrated, he throws his head back and slides his hands over his face, and when he looks forward again, there is something curious there.
a door. inconspicuous enough to only catch his attention now. worry coils deep in his chest.
hiyori warned him so, so many times about sneaking around and being too nosy for his own good, but the door calls to some hidden, primal thing inside of him, or rather, some odd, indescribable darkness is seeping out from the gaps, immaterial tendrils of it curling around his ankles and beckoning him in.
before shin even knows it, he twists the knob.
it dark inside, but he can see a staircase leading downwards. he is careful with his steps, cautiously feeling every next step, before he sees a soft, warm light emanating from below. the first ill-boding omen is the smell of sweetness and copper, and like all others, it comes way too late.
it doesn't hit him at first, but when it does, it hits hard. there's a body. a human body. something has been done to its skull, but it's still breathing, eyes open and blown out pupils following shin's every movement. it's covered in blood - some fresh, some already dried in dark stains on its clothes. the body tries to speak, but it's words are slurred and its voice sounds painfully hoarse, like it hasn't been used in months.
"who... who brought you he- ah!"
before he can say anything, there's something - someone? - behind him, wrapping an arm around his waist, and his neck feels so wet, and it hurts, and he can taste blood. shin tries to speak, but nothing comes out except for choking and gurgling. familiar green hair enters his line of vision, if only for a second.
"shin, dearie, i told you about sneaking around, didn't i?" he sighs, but there is no malice or even annoyance in his words, and shin has never felt more scared in his life. "looks like you found my little pet project, huh. do you know what this means? for both of us?" he nods as fervently as he can, ignoring the way the damaged skin of his throat stretches painfully. "one of the reasons we fled district 20 was because of the way they treated technology. what i'm doing here has the potential to become a new singularity, you know! so, i can't risk some nosy little birdie ruining it for me."
shin's blood runs cold, labored breathing getting even faster. hiyori seems to notice, and he laughs, pressing shin even closer to him, and this moment feels like an eternity.
"what, you think im just going to kill you? don't be stupid, dear! i will only have to do that if you decide to run away from here without trying to hear me out. if you don't do that, however..." hiyori holds a small ampule filled with murky liquid in front of him. a familiar bright green k is plastered on the vessel. "it will take you around, hm, 15 minutes to die from blood loss, so you can make your decision until then. ah, aren't i generous!"
he laughs again, louder than before, but all shin can focus on is the ampule in his hand. he wants to live. he wants to live so bad that nothing else matters - not the "pet project", not its implications, not wings and singularities and technologies.
"please..." he croaks out, barely legible. this seems to be enough for hiyori.
"i knew you would agree! you're such a good friend, shin!" all of a sudden, a needle pierces his skin, and breathing gets easier again. hiyori's arm leaves his waist, and he immediately crumbles to the cold concrete floor. shin's whole body feels like lead, or maybe like a marionette with its strings cut. sou lifts him up into his arms again with ease, and shin closes his eyes in a futile attempt to calm himself down. hiyori keeps talking about something, something about giving shin one of his shirts and his fabled generosity, but his mind feels completely overloaded right now.
for the first time in his life, the danger of the city doesn't feel so far away. for the first time, it feels like it's been breathing down his neck, holding an arm around his waist and a knife on his throat.
hiyori lays him down on the couch gently. wipes down his neck and collarbones with a damp cloth. helps him sit up and covers his legs with a blanket before pressing a glass of water and a weird blue pill into his hand. shin takes both without question. he's become so completely numb, observing his calmly beating heart and slowly expanding lungs from outside. for once, hiyori is completely quiet.